Certainty
by bingblot
Summary: A one-shot post-ep to "Like Father Like Daughter" (and to "Get a Clue"). Castle and Beckett talk about Alexis and about themselves. "Alexis doesn't trust me with your heart yet, Castle. And I can understand that. I wouldn't trust me with your heart either."


Disclaimer: I only wish "Castle" belonged to me.

Author's Note: A post-ep to "Like Father, Like Daughter," with some references to stuff that happened in "Get a Clue." I loved "Like Father, Like Daughter" so much, in spite of the relative lack of Caskett scenes, so to make up for it, I decided to write the Caskett scene that I would have loved to see at the end of that ep.

**Certainty**

Castle waited until he and Kate were in bed that night to ask what he'd wanted to ask since—well, since the moment Kate and Alexis had come out of the conference room in the precinct to join him.

He'd wanted to ask immediately but he hadn't. Part of him understood that whatever Alexis had needed to say to Kate was between them, should stay between them, but the rest of him desperately wanted to know, even needed to know, not out of simple curiosity but because this was Alexis and Kate, the two most important people in his life, and he always wanted to know everything when it came to either of them, let alone both of them. And now that his own relationship with Alexis appeared to have been patched up—thank God for it, since he couldn't stand feeling at odds with Alexis—the biggest concern he had, the one thing that detracted from a happiness so great he was almost terrified of it, was Alexis's relationship with Kate. He loved them both so much and, for the first time in Alexis's life, he honestly wasn't sure what he would do if it came down to a choice between the two—God forbid since the very idea of it made him sick—and he _needed_ both Alexis and Kate in his life, needed Alexis to be all right with his marrying Kate.

But then again, there hadn't really been a chance to ask either or both of them what they'd talked about. Alexis had come back to the loft with them and had, at Kate's insistence (and his somewhat grudging agreement), invited Pi over to join them for dinner that night. A real family dinner since his mother had been there too and he'd been able to look around at the women at the table—his fiancée, his daughter, his mother—and think that he was the luckiest man in the world—and then he would see Pi. The one jarring note in what would otherwise have been a perfect evening.

Pi. Now that he was safely in the privacy of his bedroom, he allowed himself the grimace the thought of the young man always seemed to provoke. Pi.

He'd been polite to Pi that night, had carefully bitten his lip a few times to refrain from making snarky asides—and twice, Kate had caught his eye and given him a look and once she'd kicked his shin to keep him from blurting out the sardonic comment that had been on the tip of his tongue. (It occurred to him he should probably be worried that the woman he was going to marry appeared to have developed the ability to read his mind.) But he'd been scrupulously polite and gradually, he'd been glad to see that Alexis had relaxed more, stopped sending him those cautious or warning looks that he hated to see.

And of course it helped that the majority of conversation around dinner had circled around Alexis, around Frank Henson's case, and so there hadn't been much opportunity for either his mother or Kate to ask Pi much about his bee-keeping or bee-counting or whatever the hell it was Pi did.

Bee-counting! Of all the ridiculous… And this was the boy his daughter—his brilliant, formerly-ambitious daughter—was infatuated with? His daughter, who had just single-handedly saved an innocent man from being executed through her sheer perseverance and devotion?

This, working on the Henson case with Alexis, had been odd but it had also felt… good… because this—the determined, stubborn, smart girl—was the Alexis he knew, the Alexis he was so proud of. It had been beyond jarring to then come home and see her sitting next to Pi at the loft, see her smiling at Pi, talking to Pi.

Oh, he knew Alexis said Pi was brilliant and the work he did was really important—and that part, at least, sounded more like his socially-conscious daughter—but really, bee-counting? And the boy himself was just so… so…

His brain flailed around for a moment and then gave up. Damn it, you knew there had to be something wrong with the boy when his writer's vocabulary couldn't come up with a word to describe Pi, the weird combination of over-exuberance, no sense of personal space or discretion, and the apparent lack of self-consciousness of a child or an idiot, to say nothing of being a fruitarian. A fruitarian—whoever heard of such a thing?!

He admitted that he had been a little ungracious—okay, fine, he'd been rude—to Pi that night he and his mother had gone over to that rat-trap otherwise known as an apartment—but really, he thought it was asking too much of any human man to be more than minimally polite to his teenage daughter's boyfriend—never mind a boyfriend like Pi.

He found himself suddenly remembering Ashley with a weird sense of wistfulness he would never have expected. Ashley, who had been so… young and so sweetly earnest and, yes, brave. To think he'd been worried that Alexis would take only economics classes at Stanford for Ashley's sake! And while he'd been right about that, he could only wish he could be worried about Alexis's classes at Columbia right now, rather than worried that his daughter appeared to have forgotten the point or the importance of her world-class education at the moment.

Bother. The tension between him and Alexis aside, even with the truce they'd reached over the Henson case, he hated, absolutely hated, this sense that he no longer knew Alexis the way he'd always thought he did, the way he'd always thought he would. Because, really, Pi? If he'd had to pick, someone like Pi would have been the last person he would have predicted Alexis would fall for, not his smart, driven daughter.

Pi—about the only possible redeeming quality, such as it was, that he could think of was the little tickle of amusement and pleasure at the way Pi insisted on calling Kate "Mrs. C-to-be." Leaving aside the accompanying irritation at the blitheness with which the boy had apparently assigned a nickname for Kate, he couldn't help the way his heart reacted at the thought of Kate as Mrs. Castle, _his_ Mrs. Castle.

His thoughts were interrupted, his brain blanking, as Kate kissed him softly on the lips.

"Castle, stop worrying. You and Alexis are talking again; it's going to be fine."

"I didn't say anything," he said automatically.

She smiled, laying her head back down to rest on his shoulder in her favorite position. "You were not saying anything very loudly."

He felt his lips quirk upwards. "I think I'm disturbed that you've developed this ability to read minds."

She laughed softly. "Don't worry, Castle. My telepathic abilities are limited to reading your mind."

"If that was meant to be comforting, you failed," he quipped. "Are you sure you want to know everything I'm thinking? My mind can be a weird, scary place."

"I'll take my chances on that."

He grinned and turned his head to kiss her hair. "How brave of you, Detective."

He sensed rather than saw her smile as she tightened her arm around him ever so slightly. And he was distracted at the thought, not for the first time, that Kate Beckett liked to cuddle. He loved it, the way she seemed so… content… curled up next to him in bed like this, his arm around her shoulders, her head resting on his shoulder, one arm around his chest, one of her legs tucked between his. He loved these moments, this closeness that had nothing to do with passion—although the passion was always present, simmering in the background, would flare up sometimes without warning. He loved the way they talked in these moments, much like they had always talked, really, only so much more now that they didn't need to hold anything back. Sometimes they talked about work, about cases or he would mention what he'd written for Nikki Heat; sometimes they talked about plans for the next day or the weekend or whatever else came up. He loved the way they were still… themselves, Castle and Beckett, and yet so much more than they used to be, now that they were also Rick and Kate. A gestalt entity, he thought fancifully—and yet not at all fancifully. Greater than the sum of its parts.

"You and Alexis did great with the Frank Henson case, Castle," Kate broke the silence to say quietly.

"Alexis did most of it," he said quickly and truthfully.

"That's not the way Alexis made it sound, with you noticing that charm beneath the body."

"I wouldn't have thought to look so carefully if it hadn't been for Alexis's determination."

"And the way you figured out the actual time of death from that clock."

"That was thanks to Alexis too; she said something about time that made me realize what that clock really meant. And she was the one who first realized the meaning of the clean back door knob that convinced me that Frank was innocent in the first place. So it was really all due to Alexis."

"You know, for someone I once thought of as being a cocky jackass, you're being remarkably reluctant to take credit for what you did," she teased.

He laughed. "Okay, I take it back. It was all me. I'm a genius. In fact, I don't know how anyone ever solves any crimes when I'm not around."

She poked him in the chest. "Now, you're going too far, Castle. I've still got more solved murders under my belt than you do."

"You had an unfair head start, Detective Beckett."

"If you think I'm going to leave you alone to solve cases on your own just so you can catch up, you can think again, Castle. I'm your partner, remember?"

"I'll never ever forget that, Beckett," he stated simply.

"Good. Now, what has you still so worried? Alexis has forgiven you; you're talking again."

"What about you and Alexis, Kate?" he blurted out. "What did she say to you earlier at the precinct? That is," he backtracked quickly, "if you want to tell me."

"She mainly just thanked me for helping with the case."

"She didn't—" he broke off and then abruptly began again, "Did she apologize for what she said about not knowing if you were the one or anything about us getting married?" he asked, bringing up, because he had to, the thing Alexis had said that terrible night a few weeks ago that had rather rankled him the most. (He had talked about it with Kate that night and apologized to Kate on Alexis's behalf and Kate had insisted no apologies were necessary—but the words still bothered him.) Alexis's anger at him for insulting Pi, he could understand and accept, in spite of his continued inability to really approve of the boy. But Kate—well, that part he hadn't really been able to forget or understand. It was the niggling thing that continued to bother him, that had kept him from fully apologizing to Alexis himself. He knew he tended to take anything to do with Kate personally—although, really, it was sort of his right and his job now since he was going to marry Kate—and no one, not even Alexis, who was still the most important person in the world to him, could say anything negative about Kate without his reacting personally and angrily.

Kate sighed a little. "Castle, I told you she doesn't have to apologize to me for what she said."

"I still think she should," he insisted. "How could she say that she's not sure you're The One? You _are_."

"You're sure of that and I'm sure of that but Alexis isn't. And that's fine, Castle. Alexis and I—we'll get there. You don't have to worry about that and as far as I'm concerned, Alexis has nothing to apologize for. Like I told Alexis earlier, I care about her in her own right and I want to be there for her; I would want to be there for her even if you and I weren't getting married."

He smiled, his heart warming, and he kissed her hair, tightening his arm around her shoulders. "I know, Kate, and I love you for it."

"Alexis just doesn't trust me yet, Castle. But—"

He drew back to stare at her in dismay. "Not trust you?" he blurted out, interrupting her. "Why wouldn't she trust you? You've never—You're trustworthy!"

She rubbed one hand against his chest in a soothing gesture. _Easy, Castle. _"I only meant that she doesn't trust me with your heart yet. And I can understand that. _I_ wouldn't trust me with your heart either," she added, a rather rueful note entering her voice.

"Kate, you… what… how can she think that? _I_ trust you with my heart and that should be enough." He trusted Kate with his heart and his life and his daughter; he would trust Kate with his soul, if it came down to it.

Her expression softened and she dropped a quick, butterfly kiss on the corner of his lips. "I know you do but in all honesty, you're not the most reliable witness when it comes to me."

He gaped at her. "What are you talking about? I love you; I would think that makes me the most reliable witness when it comes to you."

She smiled slightly, the soft light in her eyes doing rather more than anything else to calm him. Whatever she was talking about—and he didn't understand it for the life of him—it was nothing bad. "That's what I'm talking about. You love me. You and my dad might have to argue it out between yourselves which of you is the _most_ unreliable witness where I'm concerned. You both love me too much to be objective."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," he huffed, not exactly pleased, never mind the way she was looking at him.

"It's not a bad thing," she said definitely. "You—your loving me is a good thing, the _best_ thing, in my life. But Castle, look at it from Alexis's point of view. She loves you and she worries about you and she wants you to be happy."

His heart warmed. "I know she does. And you make me happy so she should love you."

"It's not quite that simple, Castle. I make you happy _now_ but Alexis also knows, better than anyone, I'd imagine, how long I made you wait, how much I hurt you, all the things I put you through."

He moved one hand to touch her cheek. "Kate, no, we've talked about this. You don't have to—"

"Yes, I do," she interrupted him, her voice gentle but also firm. "I did make mistakes, lots of them, and I broke your heart and hurt you, even if it was the last thing I wanted to do. I can admit that now, take responsibility for what I did to you."

"Kate…"

She lifted her hand to cup his cheek, giving him a small, marvelously tender smile. "But you forgave me, you still love me, even though anyone would have told you to cut and run as far away from me as possible."

He quirked the corners of his lips upwards as he managed to say, "Yeah, well, luckily for you, I've never been good at doing what other people say I'm supposed to do."

"I _am_ lucky to have you, Castle," she said simply. His heart flipped. He would never get used to Kate saying things like this to him. He knew it was still hard for her to be so open about her emotions but moments like this were becoming more frequent, her ease with talking to him, unburdening herself to him, increasing, especially in times like this, when they were lying in bed together. And it was so, so precious to him, never failed to catch at his heart. "But my point is that Alexis knows how much I've hurt you in the past so it'll take her some time to be able to trust that I won't hurt you again."

"But we've been together for more than a year and engaged for months now."

"It's not quite that easy, Castle, to regain someone's trust. And think about how you would feel if some boy—if Pi—ever hurt Alexis as much as I hurt you…"

"I'd kill him," he admitted frankly, since the thought of anyone or anything ever hurting Alexis in any way still terrified him and enraged him like nothing else.

"Then think about how you would feel if after hurting Alexis that much, Pi came back and he and Alexis got together again—how long do you think it would take you to forgive Pi fully, to trust Pi with Alexis?"

He grimaced a little, understanding Kate's reasoning even if everything in him revolted at trying to compare Kate with Pi in any way. "I don't trust Pi _now_ so… never, probably. Kate, about Alexis, you know she forgave you a long time ago, right?" He did know that. It was partly what had upset him so much that Alexis had been able to say she wasn't sure his engagement to Kate was the right thing—he'd expected Alexis to understand, had thought Alexis had already accepted Kate into the family.

"She's forgiven me for how much I hurt you before we got together, yes, but you dating me is different than marrying me. Marriage is permanent," she said with a slight quirk of her lips and he made a rueful grimace in response before he tugged her hand up to his lips to kiss her palm. But he couldn't help but love the way she said it, love the fact that she was so sure—as was he—that whatever else, _their_ marriage would be permanent.

She gave him a small smile and traced one finger lightly down the bridge of his nose in an idle caress before she went on, soberly, "I don't think Alexis fully trusts that I won't somehow leave you or otherwise hurt you in some way and leave her to pick up the pieces. And she has a point in still being angry at me and not entirely trusting me still after, well, after how I handled the whole thing with the job in D.C."

"Kate, we settled all that. You more than made it up to me when you said yes," he told her truthfully, feeling himself smiling automatically at the memory of that moment at the swings. Oh, that day, that crazy, wonderful, terrifying, perfect day—he could still remember, knew he'd never forget, his sweaty palms, the way he'd been almost dizzy with nervousness as he'd gotten down on one knee. After so many years—and in the middle of the most serious fight they'd had since getting together—he'd hardly been able to believe that he was doing it, proposing to Kate, and it was nothing remotely like any of the approximately-one-million different scenarios he'd imagined for proposing (well, with the exception of the location at the swings, that part he'd imagined a couple times), and with all that had been an odd sense of calm, of certainty, underlying all his nervousness. Not certainty when it came to her answer—never certainty about that since he'd had a huge neon sign flashing in his head screaming _You idiot. She'll never say yes_—only certainty that Kate was The One, that he wanted to marry her, spend the rest of his life with her. Thinking about it afterwards—and he had spent probably an inordinate amount of time thinking about it—he was a writer, he was always trying to come up with accurate descriptions—the best comparison he could make had been to the moment he'd first held Alexis in the hospital after she'd been born. When he'd looked down at the red-faced bundle he held so gingerly, terrified to the depths of his soul at the realization that this tiny, fragile creature was utterly dependent on him to take care of her, but in spite of the terror, feeling that same underlying calm settling over him, the soul-deep certainty that this was right, this little creature was suddenly—and forever—the dearest, most important thing in his life, the center of his world. And that was really what it came down to—he could no more doubt that Kate was The One for him than he could doubt his love for Alexis.

And for Alexis to doubt Kate's place in his life stung. He had believed that Alexis's loving heart and generosity would make Alexis welcome Kate, to say nothing of the fact that he'd always thought Alexis liked and admired Kate (with good reason). He still clung to the belief that Alexis was too smart, too fair, to hold onto any reservations about Kate for long. Alexis would come around, learn to love Kate as his mother already had—and he would really be the luckiest, happiest man in the world.

She smiled too, rather as if she could read his thoughts—for that matter, hadn't they established that she most likely could—as if the memory of her saying yes also made her smile. "I know. You forgave me for it so easily, Castle, just like you've always forgiven me when any sane person would stay angry at me for a lot longer."

"I'm not sane when it comes to you," he responded, only half-teasingly. "Don't you know by now I'm crazy about you?"

She laughed and kissed him soundly on the lips. "Why else do you think I agreed to marry you, crazy man?"

He smirked. "Because you wanted to keep me in your bed for the rest of your life?"

"Well, I did think I should make an honest man out of you," she said with mock seriousness.

"Very selfless of you, to think about my reputation like that, Beckett," he quipped.

"I know. I'm just too nice sometimes," she joked and then abruptly sobered, tightening her arm around him and burying her face in his neck. "I'm the lucky one, Rick," she said softly. "You're the one that's too good to me."

His arm tightened around her shoulders as he put his other hand under her chin to gently turn her face up to look at him. "Hey, now, none of that," he said quietly. "We're _both_ the lucky ones, okay, Kate?"

She gave him a small smile. "Okay."

"Besides," he teased gently, "if we get into a contest to determine which of us deserves the other more, we'll never see the end of it and you know how competitive I can get."

She laughed a little and kissed him. "I love you."

Nope, he would never get tired of hearing Kate say that, he thought. No matter how often she said it—and she did say it regularly now—he never got tired of it, could never keep his heart from reacting. "I know you do, Kate." And he loved that too, loved the certainty of it, loved the confidence he had in her love.

She met his eyes, her fingers lightly tracing his eyebrow, his temple, his cheek, his ear, in a half-absent-minded caress. "And Castle?"

"Hmm?" he said, a little distracted—predictably—at the touch of her fingers to his face.

"You really don't have to worry about me and Alexis. We're fine. She may not trust me with your heart yet—but I love her for wanting to protect you, even if it is from me. She'll learn to trust me when she sees I'm not going anywhere. And to be honest, I might owe her an apology for the way she found out about our engagement."

He frowned, capturing the hand that had been touching his face in his for a moment. "Kate, the words 'apology' and 'our engagement' never belong in the same sentence. As for the way Alexis found out, I'm sorry for that but what was I supposed to do? She was already gone and I could hardly wait for her to get back from Costa Rica so we could tell her in person."

"I think her bigger problem is not how she found out that we were engaged but that she didn't know ahead of time you were going to propose and that part is my fault, Castle. We both know that if it hadn't been for the mess I made about the whole interview thing, you wouldn't have proposed that day."

"Maybe," he admitted grudgingly. He really could not regret anything at all about day, no matter what had led up to it. Kate had said yes—there was _nothing_ that could make him regret anything about that! What did the actual timing of it matter? "I think she's overreacting. She knew I had the ring; I showed it to her weeks before I actually proposed so it's not like she—"

"Wait, what? When did you show her the ring?" Kate interrupted him.

"Right after I bought it. Why?"

"When did you buy the ring?"

"The same time I went in to buy your second Valentine's Day gift," he answered, with the automatic smile the memory of Valentine's Day—of her gift to him—always provoked. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said it was perfect. It had been perfect and so… _them_… After all the years of their relationship being built on coffee and crime, as it were, the typical romantic gifts like flowers and chocolates wouldn't have seemed right and instead, she'd given him… well, herself. Being let in, a part of Kate Beckett's carefully-guarded life, was what he'd wanted for years, and she'd known that. Symbolically making her apartment a shared space for them had been the perfect gift, even though up until then she'd still tended to reserve her apartment for herself—there was a (tacitly understood) reason most of their nights together had been at the loft and he hadn't minded that for the most part; there were other reasons too, Alexis, his mother, his more comfortable bed and larger shower among them. He supposed it was typical of him, that she had made such a gesture in their relationship and his mind had immediately leaped to marriage, skipping several other steps along the way. But there it was; he'd decided that night that he needed to buy her a ring, just to be ready to ask, once she was ready.

She was gaping at him a little even through her rather stunned smile. "Really? But that was months before you proposed. You knew you wanted to marry me even back then?"

It was his turn to gape at her. It surprised him how surprised _she_ sometimes seemed to be at the depth of his feelings for her. He tended to think of his love for Kate as being one of the immutable constants of his life, if not the world—the Earth revolving around the sun, the movement of the tides, his love for Alexis and his love for Kate—and she was usually so confident—kickass Detective Kate Beckett facing down the world in her high-heeled shoes—that it threw him when she showed anything less than complete certainty in his love and commitment. "Are you kidding, Kate? I think I've wanted to marry you for at least three years now and I _know_ I was thinking about proposing from basically the morning after our first night together." He paused, wiggling his brows teasingly. "Once I regained the ability to think at all, that is."

She choked on her laugh and then flattened herself against him, her hand cupping his cheek, as she kissed him with almost frantic passion. "Oh, _Rick_…" she whispered against his lips when the kiss eventually ended.

"If that's the thanks I get, I'm going to start saying that I wanted to marry you from the moment we met," he managed to joke rather breathlessly.

She gave another choking sort of laugh and kissed him again. "Oh, Castle, and I was such an idiot."

"Hey, watch it," he said with mock sternness, "no one gets to call my fiancée an idiot."

She let out a soft giggle—Kate Beckett _giggling_—she didn't giggle often but he thought it might just be his favorite sound in the world. He would tell lame jokes like that one every day for the rest of his life if it meant he could hear her giggle like this. She sounded so… carefree… so that he could almost imagine that this must be the way young Kate Beckett had sounded before her mother had died, before her confidence in life and love had been shattered and she'd been forced to grow up way too quickly. "Oh, Castle…"

"I did promise 'always', didn't I, Kate? What did you think 'always' meant?"

"I just couldn't believe it. I still have a hard time believing it, that you want 'always' with _me_, after all I put you through."

He stopped her words by pressing one finger to her lips. "No more, Kate. We're here now and that's all that matters."

"Castle, if you had the ring for so long, why didn't you propose sooner? What were you waiting for?" she asked softly.

"You to propose to me," he answered immediately and only half-jokingly.

She laughed a little. "Seriously, Castle?"

He sobered. "Honestly, Kate, I was just waiting for the right time and it never seemed like it was. I mean, with what happened to Alexis and all of that," he said with the shudder that always went through him at the memory of that time, his worst waking nightmare, "and then there was all that stuff with my knee and I couldn't go down on one knee when I was in a wheelchair, could I?" he asked with a flash of humor. "But really, Kate, I—I just wasn't sure…"

She stiffened and drew back a little. "Weren't sure about me?"

"No!" he burst out quickly. "Well, yes, but not like that," he corrected himself honestly, ignoring the automatic flutter of panic, the need to retreat behind humor. Emotional honesty of this kind was hard but this was Kate and, well, as he'd said, they were here now and he didn't doubt her anymore. "I was never unsure about what I felt, that I wanted to marry you. I was unsure that… well, that you would say yes. That's why I was waiting. I was afraid if I asked too soon, pushed too hard, you'd… I don't know, wake up and realize that this, that _I_, wasn't enough. I mean, look at you, Kate. You're beautiful and I don't only mean the way you look; it's just… everything about you. Vaughn saw it, hell, the feds saw it, although I don't think they saw you in a romantic light," he joked in an attempt to lighten the quick cloud passing over her expression at the mention of Vaughn. "You can do better than a cocky, immature jackass of a mystery writer."

It was her turn to silence him with a finger over his lips. "No, Castle. There's no one better. There never could be anyone better for me than you. That other person the world sees, the extraordinary KB," she added, quoting his dedication to her in _Heat Wave_ with a small smile, "isn't really me. You know me, Castle, you know me better than anyone else and if I'm extraordinary, it's because you see me that way and you've made me better than I was before."

Damn, she was going to make him cry unmanly tears. He fought them back, managed to say, rather huskily, "You make me better too so I guess we're even."

She kissed him softly. "Castle?"

"Hmm?"

"I would've said yes."

He blinked and smirked at her. "Um, Beckett, I know I have an overactive imagination, especially where you're concerned, but I could swear you already _did_ say yes."

She poked him. "Stop it, Castle, I meant I would have said yes if you'd asked me sooner, any time after you got the ring."

"Really?" He had to laugh. "And here I was half-convinced that if I pushed too hard by proposing too soon, you'd run away."

She cut him off with a deep, lingering kiss. "I'm so sorry, Castle," she whispered against his lips. "I'm so sorry for still holding back, for making you doubt me and what I feel for you."

"No more apologies, Kate," he told her firmly. "You told me everything I ever needed to hear when you said you loved me and you'd marry me."

"I will marry you," she breathed against his lips, echoing what she'd said months ago at the swings and he felt the same giddy joy he'd felt then welling up inside him. _Kate Beckett wanted to marry him! _

And then she shifted above him, straddling him, and he abruptly forgot what they'd been talking about, lost all interest in conversation, or at least that kind of conversation.

She bent over him, her hair falling down around his face, so close until her eyes, her face, filled his entire field of vision—which was fine with him because, honestly, there was nothing and no one he would rather look at than her.

"I promise you, Castle, I'll never ever let you or Alexis or anyone else doubt how much I love you," she whispered.

"That's… uh… good…" he gasped, not quite aware of what he was saying, his brain only retaining just enough coherence to know that he should say something.

She smiled against his lips and then she kissed him, let her body slide sinuously against his, and then there were no more words, only sensation and want and need and passion and love and Kate.

For the rest of his life, always, there would be Kate. And there was nothing else he needed to know.

_~The End~_

_A/N 2: I've always thought more needed to be said to deal with Alexis's reaction to her dad and Beckett being together, especially after what she said in "Get a Clue" so this was an attempt at getting into that. And I've discovered that I really love writing Castle and Beckett having these conversations about their relationship, talking to each other in a way we don't really get to see in canon (with good reason, admittedly). I only hope going over their past like this didn't get boring or repetitive. Thoughts, reactions? Thanks for reading! _

_Enjoy tonight's ep, that I plan on enjoying while toasting to Castle and Beckett's future happiness with some Sancerre, since Castle said it's Nikki's and Rook's wine of choice. _


End file.
